Predictors of contact in follow-up of mentally ill patients
(2017) EnMesh — Location: Groningen (5.October.2017)
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- Abstract
- Aim: Contact maintenance with Severe Mentally Ill (SMI) patients is challenging. Indeed, SMI patients are considered as being difficult to reach. This can be related to the chronic and complex aspects of the disease. However, contact maintenance is needed to reach out to patients after a hospital discharge and to ensure continuity of care. However, little is known about effective contact methods. This study aims to report effective strategies to recontact patients and to assess patients’ individual predictors of contact. Methods: Within a larger European study (COFI), 820 SMI patients were recruited during a hospital stay in Belgium. Contact details were collected during baseline assessment. Patients were followed up after 12 months. A hierarchical contact procedure, including phone calls, e-mail, contacts with relatives, postal mail, and an additional contact with the recruiting hospital was implemented. Results: The majority of patients (72.2%) could be contacted. Phone was effective for 67.2% of patients. After the first call attempt, 46% of the phone-contacted patients were contacted, and 85.8% at the 4th call. However, the effort per call attempt increased, reaching 18.5 call attempts to reach one patient, at the 11th attempt. For 20% of the contacted patients, an additional contact with the recruiting service was done. Higher-educated patients were significantly more successfully contacted (79.1%) compared to less educated patients (69.2%). Patients with mood disorders, were significantly easier to contact (76%) than other patients (66%). Conclusion: Phone is a successful method up to 7 attempts without contact, adding more calls is not efficient. In addition maintaining a good partnership with the hospital is an efficient strategy to update information and to reach out to patients. It appears that a higher educational level predicts contact, thus adjusting the contact procedure to educational diversity, could increase the diversity of the contacted population and limit contacting bias.
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Citations
Molera Gui, M., Nicaise, P., & Lorant, V. (2017). Predictors of contact in follow-up of mentally ill patients. EnMesh, Groningen. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/177997